Confronting History

The African-American work song session at the FSGW workshop has led to much discussion here among my friends on the nature of racial politics in the US and their failings in properly addressing their history of slavery in a way that would significantly improve race relations.

I don't know enough about it to really comment, but David sent me this interesting article on how Germany has attempted to come to terms with their horrific past.

I am also reminded of what Dr. Gramit said to me a few years ago when I was really struggling with a reading from Adorno in which he focused on a single note in a Beethoven symphony as the turning point of modernity: Adorno was a German who was writing just after the Holocaust, and in the wake of such unfathomable events he was searching for whatever he could find to justify German existence.